As BNAmericas.com reports, DigitalBridge Group (NYSE: DBRG) portfolio companies are actively installing cell towers in Chile, Colombia, and across Latin America as demand for connectivity in the southern hemisphere continues to grow. Telecom towers, data centers and fiber outreach are all on the upswing. Small cell development is also seen as a growth market in a growing number of countries like Brazil.
“We’ve started to see an uptick in small cell capex towards the back end of this year,” said DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi. “There are a series of new requests for different city builds by all the carriers. The carriers for small cells have been doing a lot of self-performing in the past two years. We don’t think that makes sense for them going forward.”
“Small cells are difficult,” he continued. “You’ve got to hold a lot of WIP [work in progress] on your balance sheet. It’s time-consuming, labor-intensive, and so we’re seeing a pick-up in outdoor backlog, particularly of Freshwave, which is our European business, and here in the U.S. We’re really optimistic about small cells in the long term. Growth across various telecom enterprises has provided an environment that could create numerous M&A opportunities for DigitalBridge in several countries. We’re very pleased with what’s happening in Brazil. We’re seeing a lot of good M&A opportunities, a lot of organic growth.”
Ganzi said in terms of organic growth, Brazil is the second-fastest organic growth market for his company showing a ten percent organic growth this year alone.
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